Tariffs Made America Great

The American Conservative ^ | July 27, 2018 | PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

[Sacajaweau]

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/25/harley-davidson-plans-thailand-factory-to-serve-southeast-asian-market.html

[JohnBrowdie]

a response to tariffs is whatever destroys the tariffs. building a plant in the country imposing the tariffs simply because of the tariffs is utter capitulation.

[xzins]

You see what’s going on.

Buying slave labor goods from overseas undercuts jobs here, depresses wages, and guts the middle class.

[odawg]

“I’m skeptical that tariffs made America great, and Hamilton was a big-gov’t liberal.”

Are you skeptical of the statistics?

Northern industrialists feared the Southern slave owners would one day build factories and man them with slaves, which was probably true. They knew they could not compete with slave labor. That was the main reason the Civil War was orchestrated.

Of course that motive was hidden away by historians, and replaced with the idealistic stuff everyone chants now.

There is a reason mobile phones are made in China by American companies. Cheaper labor. Huge number of jobs that could be here.

[xzins]

What added to the cost of making motorcycles here that made production overseas a better deal?

[xzins]

Exactly. And our tariffs will lead those companies to build more plants here.

That’s why the EU blinked.

And what about the 50% of untaxed Americans?

Shouldn’t they be paying something so they have skin in the game?

[JohnBrowdie]

hamilton was a high federalist, but you get a big F- in history, too.

how can you call a guy a big gov’t liberal when he predated government? you’re committing a howler of chronological error, and you’re also saying something that’s really just stupid when properly placed back into it’s historical context.

[PCPOET7]

people confuse an advance supply network distribution as industry. tariffs prevent are product distribution system from being exploited by other companies outside the united states and there partners that import into the united state to resell. an across the board 5 % tarif on goods would protect all industry with in the united states and restart industries like textiles that have left the united states only to be imported from third world countries that employ a population that works at slave wages.

[Alberta's Child]

Labor costs are a tiny component of the cost of producing a mobile phone. The biggest reason to manufacture mobile phones in Asia is that the size of the Asian consumer market is staggering. The land area you can reach within a 5-hour flight from Singapore probably has 3+ billion people living in it.

[discostu]

The reason mobiles are made in Asia is because 8 of the 10 biggest mobile markets in the world are partly or fully in Asia. Us and Brazil at 3 and 4 is it. With China at #1 with 1.3 billion cellphones and India at #2 with 1.1 billion US (with only 327 million cellphones) labor could be free and they still wouldn’t be building them here.

[DannyTN]

Here's a quote supporting that Jefferson was initially against manufacturing: "While we have land to labor, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a workbench or twirling a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry; but for the general operations of manufacture, let our workshops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there than bring them to the provision and materials and with them their manners and principles." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIX, 1782. ME 2:230

And here are quotes indicating he changed his mind. I'm certain there is a better more direct quote out there, but can't find it. Nevertheless, these should suffice....

• "I am quoted by those who wish to continue our dependence on England for manufactures. There was a time when I might have been so quoted with more candor, but within the thirty years which have since elapsed, how are circumstances changed!" --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Austin, 1816. ME 14:389
• "I had [once] persuaded myself that a nation distant as we are from the contentions of Europe, avoiding all offences to other powers and not over-hasty in resenting offence from them, doing justice to all, faithfully fulfilling the duties of neutrality, performing all offices of amity and administering to their interests by the benefits of our commerce--that such a nation, I say, might expect to live in peace and consider itself merely as a member of the great family of mankind; that in such case it might devote itself to whatever it could best produce, secure of a peaceable exchange of surplus for what could be more advantageously furnished by others, as takes place between one country and another of France. But experience has shown that continued peace depends not merely on our own justice and prudence but on that of others also; that when forced into war, the interception of exchanges which must be made across a wide ocean becomes a powerful weapon in the hands of an enemy domineering over that element, and to the distresses of war adds the want of all those necessaries for which we have permitted ourselves to be dependent on others, even arms and clothing. This fact, therefore, solves the question by reducing it to its ultimate form, whether profit or preservation is the first interest of a State? We are consequently become manufacturers to a degree incredible to those who do not see it and who only consider the short period of time during which we [had] been driven to them by the suicidal policy of England." --Thomas Jefferson to Jean Baptiste Say, 1815. ME 14:258
• "We have experienced what we did not [before] believe: that there exists both profligacy and power enough to exclude us from the field of interchange with other nations; that to be independent for the comforts of life we must fabricate them ourselves. We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist... Shall we make our own comforts or go without them at the will of a foreign nation? He, therefore, who is now against domestic manufacture must be for reducing us either to dependence on that foreign nation or to be clothed in skins and to live like wild beasts in dens and caverns. I am not one of these." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Austin, 1816. ME 14:391
• "The British War [of 1812] has left us in debt; but that is a cheap price for the good it has done us. The establishment of the necessary manufactures among ourselves, the proof that our government is solid, can stand the shock of war, and is superior even to civil schism, are precious facts for us." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1817. (*) ME 15:115

[JohnBrowdie]

-—I don’t understand your argument. you seem to be supporting draconian tariffs because you think that will compel foreign industry to manufacture their bamboo baby cradles in the US.

-—the EU “blinked” because DJT was f**king their stock markets up; that was the whole point of the tariffs to begin with.

-—and I don’t even partially understand what your point is about “untaxed americans” or skin in the game.

[odawg]

“The biggest reason to manufacture mobile phones in Asia is that the size of the Asian consumer market is staggering.”

That is laughable. Companies export their products now, as they have been doing so for thousands of years. It doesn’t really cost that much to freight mobile phones.

[Reily]

He more one studies Jefferson the less impressed one is.

[CodeToad]

You got it. Dependents make for Democrats. LBJ even said so.

[odawg]

“Labor costs are a tiny component of the cost of producing a mobile phone.”

Slave labor, over there, probably isn’t very costly.

[DannyTN]

At least he learned.

The War of 1812 make it very clear that America needed to have it’s own manufacturing.

That’s why import tariffs are important.

Offshoring as much industry as we have done, is foolish. It’s “Fool trade” as Trump pointed out.

[kabar]

Pat knocks it out of the park—again. Spot on.

[mrsmith]

“A free people should promote such manufactures as tend to render them independent on others for essentials, especially military supplies,” said President Washington...

It can’t be said enough: “What a man!”.
“Essentials”

[Alberta's Child]

True. But since the U.S. dollar is a very strong global currency, we are always going to be at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to manufacturing products that can be produced anywhere ... especially products that are manufactured for sale in Third World countries.

That's why U.S. industrial output is higher than ever before, but we are heavily involved in the manufacture of products that are sold to governments or wealthy consumers -- aircraft, cars, machinery, weapons, etc.